Yesterday, with Win as my guide, I walked through the market amidst the constant jabbering and curious eyes of women, sole rulers of this domain, who sell any creature that slithers, swims, flaps, and flies and anything that grows from tree or earth. Men hover about, flirting with the young ones and gossiping with any with tongue and ears. Baskets and tables were stacked with pyramids of fruits and mounds of vegetables new to my eyes. One fruit has the brown scales of a snake; a second, small, round, and red in color, has crinkly spines like a baby porcupine; and another that looks like a ball of worn leather holds drops of white flesh sweet as pure sugar. One of the women sliced open the spiny fruit and offered me the white flesh cupped inside. I stood with my hands at my sides until Win bid me take it. Though it has been more than a year since I have been away from the Rialto, the prohibitions we live under are hard to escape—they burrow like termites into your being. Forbidden like a common prostitute from touching fruit in the market, I have to struggle to break this unwanted habit. It is not easy to be a free man. What Win takes for granted without pause—touching, squeezing, and sampling the fruitmonger’s offerings—are gifts for me to savor. The prickly fruit in my hand, its sweet, moist flesh in my mouth, I felt a free man, my soul unshackled.
You will be jealous when I tell you of my home, even though its walls are made of wood, its floor of split bamboo, and its roof cane and plaster mixed with lime—houses of brick and stone are few, even for foreign traders. It is mine alone. Peguans build houses only a single story high, for they think it an insult to their honor to live under others; and the men here, mired in superstition, are afraid for their souls if a woman’s private parts were to pass above their heads. What a dishonored race they would think us poor Venetian Israelites, stacked family upon family, in a warren of quarters carved one from the other.
I have a feeling that this house will bring us good fortune. Whenever I tell a Peguan I live in the house of Massimo the Genoese, they bow their heads and with a slight smile say it is a very auspicious house. One Peguan trader told me that my house bore healthy fruit. Lush coconut palms shade the verandah. They must bear tasty flesh and refreshing liquid. Likely, the Genoese was a generous man who shared his bounty with others.
Curtains made of wooden beads, not doors, separate the rooms and keep the house cool. I feel like a child at play pushing the beads with my hands when I pass from my sleeping room to the room where I eat my meals and write these letters, cross-legged before a low table under the light of an oil lamp. An old woman named Khaing, who served the Genoese, cooks and sweeps for me. She hides herself in the back of the house, and I do not see her unless I want to.
The house is raised above the ground about five feet and an open verandah covered by the steep-sloping roof stretches the width of the house. Here Win and I speak in the cool air of the morning before setting out on our day, and in the evening when the city turns quiet. How I savor the simple pleasure of standing on my own verandah and watching life’s procession. Do the Gentiles truly believe we would mock their holidays and holy parades if they allowed us open balconies on which to stand? What do they fear we would contaminate by our gaze that they forbid us balconies and brick our windows?
This is a city of wood, not stones, and the danger of fire always lurks. Fire wardens patrol the streets and check to make sure that everyone, Peguan or foreigner, cooks only in pits of prescribed depths and at the prescribed hours. They fear fire so much you cannot even smoke a pipe in these streets. I can still see the smoke-blackened ground where houses once stood near the street of the Portuguese, where Win tells me a half year ago a wind-whipped fire began and consumed dozens of houses and pagodas. The king made sure those responsible paid in blood for their carelessness.
I have yet to sleep through the night. I find the thick straw mat on the floor comfortable, but uninvited strangers interrupt my sleep. The first night someone knocked on my bedroom wall and woke me. Who’s there? I cried out, but no one answered. In the morning I asked Win to find out why Khaing had wanted to come into my room. He smiled and started to make a clucking sound with his tongue in perfect imitation of my nocturnal visitor, which turned out to be a small lizard they call a gecko. They skitter up the beams and across the ceiling—I am getting used to their occasional serenade; and since they feast on flies and mosquitoes, they are welcome boarders. The second night I was awakened by what sounded like pebbles thrown against the shutters. Young boys playing tricks on a strange-looking foreigner; but when I went out onto the verandah the next morning, it was carpeted with bugs the size of black beads. Hopefully these vermin will cease their visits when the winds change. Knowing my stay is temporary, all these irritations and discomforts can be borne.
Cousin, I imagine you talking back to my letter, pestering me to move quickly over markets and city streets and speak of things of greater import. I am afraid the women of this city will disappoint your fantasies. I thought the wives and concubines of the Peguan sailors, whose presence on ship I found unseemly and indecent, were singularly ugly and maybe not a fair example of their kind. I was wrong: the women here, despite whatever natural beauty some may possess, are worse in appearance than the cheap women who bare their breasts near the Church of San Samuele or the oddest painted courtesan you might find in the forbidden places you sometimes frequent.
Where to begin the litany of their grotesqueries? Their teeth are blackened dark as charcoal and their lips stained red from the betel leaves they constantly chew and spit on the ground. At first I thought they were ill, coughing up gobs of blood. If they stand or crouch on their haunches in one place for any amount of time, like the sellers of fruit and vegetables in the market, the ground around them is as spattered and splotched as a butcher’s stall. Behind these reddened lips—far from rose petals, dear cousin—you find “a flock of sheep that are even shorn,” but they are black sheep. I am afraid white teeth remind these people of dogs, and the pointed canines we are born with are filed smooth to separate their kind from the wild animals of the jungle. Their faces look like sad Carnival clowns—their brown cheeks and foreheads roughly painted with yellow powder to protect them from the sun. It certainly has no allure for any but a heathen.
What you may have heard is true: these women walk about naked from the waist up. But I am afraid reality comes a far second to the imagination. After just one day of market crones’ sagging breasts, dried and striated like rotten gourds, you want to shield your eyes or offer them shawls to cover their shame. A few young ones do catch the eye, but what the future promises so assaults you that even the most dissolute libertine would find it difficult for this display to fire the flames of passion. Some women walk the streets with skirts tied so tight about them that when they take a step they expose their private parts. Win says a distant queen ordered this practice to turn the men of the kingdom away from their rampant sodomy. For any decent man, it can only turn them red with shame. The debauched Europeans who take these women for their temporary wives must have eyes blinded by desire. There can be no affection in these arrangements.
Before I put my pen to bed let me relate something curious that has occurred several times when I have returned home after spending the day at the royal trading house. Across the street there are two large palm trees whose morning shade draws women selling coconuts, limes, and other fruit. In the late afternoon they remain, joined by their friends, crouching on their haunches and, by the look of it, exchanging gossip, as old women do. My passage seems to draw them into animated chatter and even laughter—their hands covering their red-stained mouths, their eyes dancing. Am I, this strange Jew, so comical a figure? But there is nothing to mark me as a Jew—my yellow hat is stored away until my return. Perhaps it is the dark beard that I have grown since my departure—the men here are smooth skinned and carry pincers with them, and in idle moments pull straggly wisps from their chins and cheeks. But many other foreigners have beards thick as mine. As I walk about the city, I do not seem to draw the same mirthful attention that
these old crones direct my way. Most curious.
As I write, I finger the hamsa hand that hangs around my neck. Your gift has brought me safely to my new home. As you promised, it warded off the devils of the desert and the monsters of the deep; and though it did not calm the sea, it did settle my stomach after only a week on the rolling waves. Though reason makes me question its power. I wonder if this amulet works and therefore I believe, or does it work because I believe? The absence of harm during my long journey argues, if not for faith, at least an open mind, which I will keep until I return safe to your side.
I wish, dear cousin, that you were here to walk these streets with me and share most directly the curiosities of this world. I miss your tongue sweet with charming pleasantries. Sadly, our companionship can only be in my dreams that I now most eagerly invite.
Your cousin,
Abraham
30 October 1598
Dear Joseph,
Another Sabbath has passed and thanks to the Holy One, blessed be He, and to Win, who is more brother than broker, our business here goes well. We are gathering stones that should bring us gain when I return. Win and I have become alchemists turning cloth to coin, and coin to rubies and sapphires.
My Sabbaths pass in solitary prayer, as I am the only man of our faith here. I have met a Portuguese filibuster, who from his looks and manner I believe hides his Jewish heart under the golden cross that hangs about his neck, but he has said nothing to me nor I to him. He tips his hat and smiles. I think he is measuring me. I speak freely with Win of my faith and his strange beliefs, but it would not be wise to pursue my suspicions with this rough-looking fellow.
A solitary believer, I worried when I arrived that I would not be able to mark the start of the Sabbath. There is no trumpeter here to signal its imminence, no sea of yellow hats sweeping me home. But the Holy One, blessed be He, in his mystery sends me flocks of sparrows that swarm among the branches of the shade trees outside the verandah. At sunset they burst forth in a choir of song. I put down the ledger and tell Win that it is time to stop speaking of rubies and trade.
There are only four royal jewel brokers, and we are blessed that Win is ours. Despite his meek appearance, he is a man of strong will. I am certain that without his keen eyes and loyalty, not to speak of the fear he arouses in the underlings at the royal godowns, our cloth would have disappeared from the customs house before I could trade it for the money with which to buy the rubies and sapphires. The customs officers are like vultures, swooping down to feast first for themselves before serving the king. It is easy, Win says, to pick out a customs official in a crowd—they are the ones with big bellies and full cheeks. They do not miss a meal. Their wives are clothed in the finest Indian cloth, and their fat fingers, circled with rings, shine like golden sausages. I do not begrudge him one coin of his two percent commission and would gladly pay him more for all his value to us.
I would pay another one percent just to see his face wrinkle like a dried plum when he smiles, which is often. Like many of his people, he flees from the word “no” like a miser does a beggar. He wishes to please, and “no” seems a word he is constitutionally unable to utter. “Yes” is always on his lips or in the shake of his head, but then I count two beats for the inevitable “but.”
—Can we visit the royal treasury to speak of the rubies today?
—Yes, he says, and then pauses, but we should wait until tomorrow when it will be more auspicious to speak of these things.
—Is it safe to travel to visit the pagoda north of the Prome Gate?
Oh, yes, then pauses, but it would be best to go when all the monks have returned. I sometimes ask him a question just to see how he will wiggle a “no” from a “yes.”
Our goods, like all foreign trade goods, are stored in royal storehouses, built of brick and thick stone to resist fire, at the edge of the old city, near the royal enclosure. At Win’s guidance we are selling off our Indian cloth gradually to extract the highest price possible in the market. So far we have accumulated a fine supply of stones that our clients in noble houses will pay handsomely for.
The Persians and Turks do not miss a day at the trading house: the princes in their lands are hungry for jewels. To a man they bargain as if their names would be besmirched were they to pay one cent more than they had intended. Sometimes I think the royal traders drive a harder bargain with them because of their doggedness. One Turk buys many stones, but all of poor quality. He constantly brags of the low prices he pays, but Win calls him a bottom-fisher, for he feasts on food no one of better taste can stomach. Either he has a poor eye or sells to old men with clouded vision and young brides. The Chinese traders buy few stones but only of the highest quality. They go about their business saying little and keeping to themselves. Win praises their eye above all others. They hold the stones to the light and turn them slowly between their fingers, finding imperfections that escape the rest of us. I watched one Chinese hold a ruby in the palm of his hand and close his fingers around it, as if he were trying to feel the heat of its soul.
Though I breathe freer air here, I still conduct our business quietly. It is a habit I have learned well from Uncle, not to draw attention to ourselves and to dealings forbidden—at least in the Gentiles’ public posturing—to our people. When they need stones of fine quality to impress retainers and rivals or keep content their wives and lovers, our Venetian neighbors suddenly find it convenient to forget what their own laws prohibit.
You will find it strange that in this land every man may mint his own money. It is called ganza, and we traders must be careful not to be cheated by unscrupulous men who would make their coins light with copper and heavy with lead. I have learned not to be misled by Win’s smile. He casts a wary eye on all men, fellow or foreigner. He pays a monthly fee to a public assayer who weighs and binds with his seal all the coins given to us in trade.
I may be here only a short time, but that is no call for deception. I have acted in good faith, as if I were trading with my own people. These Peguans may be strangers and idolaters, but that is not license to deceive. What our law forbids, our law forbids. Many traders, especially the Portuguese, believe they have no obligation to keep bargains with pagans if it plays to their advantage. For me, my word is my word, to whomever it is given. I may be far from my people, but not from the eyes of God.
Win knows well the value of stones. From our earlier purchases we need few words between us to set the boundaries of our bidding. In the royal trading house, the officers of the king spread out the stones in shallow wooden boxes placed on small tables one after the other in a long, narrow room, the sapphires on one table, the spinels on a second, the rubies on another. A gaggle of observers with sharp eyes and quick opinions, but most with empty purses, crowd around the tables. When a buyer is ready, he signals a royal trader and they sit down at the table to bargain.
It is not like any bargaining that you have seen, or rather that you have not seen. I am not teasing you with my words. The table is covered with a dark blue cloth. The buyer and seller do not speak a word. They do not want the public, leaning over them like willows at water’s edge, to know the details of their business. They speak with their hands hidden beneath the cloth. It is all done by touch—every finger, every joint has special meaning. Win is teaching me this gentle art, but I am still a child in learning its ways. It is like the touch of hands between lovers as they dance in front of family and friends. There are ways of speaking when the tongue must be silent and even eyes must stare in innocence. One finger is squeezed, then two or three. The message received, fingers are held and squeezed in return. Each knows by touch alone the desire and longing of the other. Even if I was adept at this silent language and my hands could speak while my tongue was mute, it works to our interests that I watch in silence while Win speaks with practiced hands for me. At the table, he buys us time and stones, as it is the custom in Pegu for the buyer to have three days to examine more closely the stones and return them if he is not sati
sfied with their quality. It is rare that any stones are returned, for it is a great loss of face to the king’s trader, and in lesser measure, does not speak well for the eyes or bargaining skill of the buyer’s broker. I have not taken this path, and do not think with Win’s eyes and hands it is one I will ever need follow.
I find myself strangely taken with the trade, given my previous disinterest. It was something I did more out of loyalty to Uncle than for myself. It was simply a means to help put food on the table and clothes on the backs of those who had done the same for me when I was young and orphaned. But I have come to see it as more. There is another community other than that of the Israelites, another community beyond the community of the Word.
A community of exchange covers the world, and we are only a small part of it. Our silver in Surat turned to indigo blue and madder red and silken patola, and once in Pegu, with trade’s alchemy, they are transformed into rubies and sapphires that in Venice will turn to gold and silver once more. A nobleman in Mantua sealing his letters with the finest wax owes the privacy of his words to some half-naked infidel collecting lac in these distant jungles. From places that are only names to us—Sumatra, Chieng Mai, Yunnan, Ava, Ternate—come spices, fragrant woods, and colorful cloth that are traded in another no less exotic place for precious stones or rice or glazed jars that themselves bear wine or other spices held dear. From some creature slinking through the jungles comes the musk for the scent a courtesan dabs behind her ears and between her breasts to lure her besotted lover. Where do all those who push themselves away from the table with full bellies think the pepper, cinnamon, and cloves come from to make meat fit for their mouths? Do those Franciscans that bedevil us with their sharp tongues and sulfurous minds believe the incense they inhale with rapturous chants comes from some peasant’s field outside Assisi? Do the Charons who transport us to the other shore think the lotions with which they embalm our flesh bubbles from Veneto springs? We are part of the world—unless we live like stylites in the desert, surviving on air, faith, and rainwater. We cannot escape this net of exchange that binds us without our choosing. How strange that I feel so much more a part of the world so far from the world that I have known.
The Jewel Trader of Pegu Page 3